On a hot day along the banks of the Nepean River at Emu Plains, a cool, relaxing space awaits at Penrith Regional Gallery: An indoor Japanese stone garden and bonsai exhibition.

The exhibition- Kare Sansui Landscape Japanese raked garden is on till March 24th and is filled with collaborations.

Cowra Japanese Gardens have collaborated with the gallery to create two Japanese stone gardens. One of the gardens has a particularly special connection to the area, as Dr Leanne Hall, director of Penrith Regional gallery and the Lewers Bequest explains:

"We were very keen to show two gardens, one in response to the local typography of the Blue Mountains, the region where the gallery is situated, as well as a traditional garden.

The (Blue Mountains) garden is particularly special, involving the Cowra white pebble and also the local river stone to create the river. Very large pieces of granite make up the Blue Mountains.

We made an approach to the gardens as they have some of the best Japanese gardens in Australia. And they have two very fine landscape gardeners, who have also trained in Kyoto, which is the famous city of Japanese stone gardens" said Hall.

The stone gardens work very well inside but the gallery had a problem when thinking about how they would involve plants in the exhibition.

This was until they approached the Nepean Bonsai Society.

Whilst taking a look at the exhibition, I met with John Marsh, Alan Harding, and Lee Wilson from the society.

Marsh, Harding and Wilson gave me some great insights into the exhibition, the society and passed on some great tips for beginners.

I was surprised to learn that the Nepean Bonsai society has been going for just over four decades.

"I was actually the founder of the Nepean Bonsai Society approximately 41 years ago.. I've seen it grow from that... I was president for about 18 years, and still highly involved in the club and lots of activities" said Marsh.

How did the society get started?

"I had just bought a house and I was interested in getting a garden going. The Woman's Weekly put out a little magazine in the middle of the magazine talking about Bonsai, explaining what Bonsai was all about. I thought 'this is a good part of gardening I will give this a go'.

There was another lady called Val Allen who put an ad in the paper, she had seen the same article, asking people in the district that were interested in Bonsai to get together and form a club. So we did" said Marsh.

The bonsai trees are incredible to look at and the exhibition has a nice variety of trees.

Australian natives are suggested as good trees to start with for beginners.

"The Port Jackson fig is native to the Sydney area, and in fact to beginners that is probably what we would recommend. Get yourself a nice Port Jackson fig and you'll get stunning results very quickly here in Sydney, as it's native to the area and the climate is very suitable" said Harding.

Even with native trees, a lot of patience and focus is needed to successfully grow a bonsai.

"Buy a reasonably good bonsai to start with for inspiration and something to keep you going.

Then you can go back to starting off from seeds, which take a lot longer to grow but that's something you can work towards when you've got a finished one to look at.

You can grow them from cuttings as well , they also take a while to develop, or you can buy partly trained stock from Bonsai nurseries and work from that.

It's an ongoing thing, your tree is never finished. They say a finished bonsai is a dead bonsai" said Marsh.

Marsh, Harding and Wilson are very experienced in the art of bonsai but respect the fact that whilst we have great bonsai artists in Australia, we don't have grand masters here.

"We prefer not to say we have grand masters in Australia. The grand masters are really from China.

Which is where the art started about 3,000 years ago, it started in China, and moved to Japan.

You can't have one master who's got the best tree in Chinese style and one who has got it in Japanese style.

Then there is also Vietnamese style, there's Australian style.

So we don't aim to have the best or a master, we just aim to have the best trees we can do" said Wilson.

Bonsai is a pretty time consuming hobby but how much does it cost financially?

"Cost factor is as much as you want to make it or as little as you want to make it.

If you are quite happy to work with young stock, develop it and grow it yourself, it can be quite reasonable.

Going back to when I first started, you could only get Japanese pots and they were quite expensive. These days there are a lot of pots coming in from China, Korea, Taiwan. All over the place.

If you are prepared to grow it yourself it doesn't cost too much" said Harding.

Some trees are worth a surprsingly large amount:

"We've heard of some trees in Australia selling for up tp $60,000. We aren't the owners of those trees, as you can see" said Wilson.